The Radical Plasticity Thesis: How the brain learns to be conscious
Axel eCleeremans
Frontiers in Psychology May 22, 2014 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00086 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Neuroplasticity |
| Keywords | Consciousness Learning Wagering Neural networks Higher-order thought theory |
| Key points | Proposes that consciousness arises from the brain's learned redescriptions of its own activity, termed the Radical Plasticity Thesis. |
Abstract
In this paper, I explore the idea that consciousness is something that the brain learns to do rather than an intrinsic property of certain neural states and not others. Starting from the idea that neural activity is inherently unconscious, the question thus becomes: How does the brain learn to be conscious? I suggest that consciousness arises as a result of the brain's continuous attempts at predicting not only the consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents, but also the consequences of activity in one cerebral region on activity in other regions. By this account, the brain continuously and unconsciously learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, so developing systems of meta-representations that characterise and qualify the target first-order representations. Such learned redescriptions, enriched by the emotional value associated with them, form the basis of conscious experience. Learning and plasticity are thus central to consciousness, to the extent that experiences only occur in experiencers that have learned to know they possess certain first-order states and that have learned to care more about certain states than about others. This is what I call the Radical Plasticity Thesis. In a sense thus, this is the enactive perspective, but turned both inwards and (further) outwards. Consciousness involves signal detection on the mind; the mind is the brain's (non-conceptual, implicit) theory about itself. I illustrate these ideas through neural network models that simulate the relationships between performance and awareness in different tasks.
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Citations in the library
Cited by 61
- Theories of consciousness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience July 1, 2022
- Predictive processing as a systematic basis for identifying the neural correlates of consciousness Philosophy and the Mind Sciences December 30, 2020
- The emergence of primary anoetic consciousness in episodic memory. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience January 3, 2014
- The evolutionary origins of the Global Neuronal Workspace in vertebrates. Neuroscience of Consciousness 2023
- Making sense: Dopamine activates conscious self-monitoring through medial prefrontal cortex. Human Brain Mapping May 1, 2015
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Cites 12
- How rich is consciousness? The partial awareness hypothesis. Trends in Cognitive Sciences July 1, 2010
- A connectionist theory of phenomenal experience. Behavioral and Brain Sciences February 1, 1999
- Human consciousness and its relationship to social neuroscience: A novel hypothesis. Cognitive Neuroscience 2011
- Measuring consciousness: is one measure better than the other? Consciousness and Cognition December 2010
- Know thyself: metacognitive networks and measures of consciousness. Cognition November 2010
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